1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to adjustable foot supports, and more particularly, to adjustable foot supports for furniture.
2. Description of Related Art
By nature, the floor upon which furniture generally rests is never truly level. Furniture, once placed in its final resting spot, however, needs to be in a level, stable position—lest you are left with wobbly furniture. The classic example is a wobbly table that annoys those seated around it and can even result in objects sliding off the table. Moreover, an uneven/unlevel cabinet often causes interference between the hinges and the associated doors and the sliders and the associated drawers, resulting in non-functional compartments within the cabinet. To level furniture, adjustment between the surface (floor) and furniture is needed at: front-to-back of the furniture, side-to-side of the furniture, and cross-corner of the furniture. In other words, all surface points of the furniture may be need to be adjusted to level the furniture. Thus, leveling of the furniture can only be accomplished by using multiple points of adjustment.
Leveling is generally done by placing height-adjustable foot supports between the furniture and the resting surface (floor). The use of multiple-independent adjustment points across a given area eliminates the racking effect (i.e., interference and non-functional doors and drawers) on the cabinet caused by an uneven floor. Additionally, leveling becomes very important not just for proper function of each cabinet, but also for stability and proper alignment when cabinets are placed side-by-side to ensure that adjacent work surfaces and counter tops are even and level—and the larger the cabinet, the greater the range of adjustment is required.
Commercially available adjustable feet on the market have several characteristics that make them impractical for use in many applications, and particularly in the ready-to-assemble (RTA) furniture industry. Many styles of adjustable feet use a standard, machine-threaded steel rod that requires an additional threaded nut to be inserted into a fixed location on the furniture cabinet. This type of adjustable foot support typically requires a tool to adjust and is visually unappealing. Other types of adjustable feet are constructed of plastic material, but generally only support small loads. Moreover, the mounting of these plastic feet do not comply with high speed European 32-mm boring machines used by the RTA furniture industry. Accordingly, there is a need for an adjustable foot that has a large range of adjustment, that meets increased performance and load requirements, that complies the RTA furniture industry mounting applications, that can be adjusted without the use of tools, and which also has an aesthetic appearance at an economical price.